suspect—a highly influential function in forming the Greek element. A fuller view of this element in its composition naturally aids in an important manner upon any estimate of Pelasgians and Hellenes respectively. This Phœnician influence reaches far into the sphere of mythology, and tends, as he thinks, greatly to clear the views we may reasonably take of that curious and interesting subject. The aim of this revised edition of his Homeric studies was to assist Homeric studies in our schools and Universities, and to convey a practical knowledge of the subject to persons who are not habitual students. Few men have found time to appear in print so frequently as Mr. Gladstone. His latest publication bears the date of 1898; his earliest appeared in 1837. One of his great topics has been Homer. The old Greek poet ought to be, according to Mr. Gladstone, in everyone’s hands. His latest work on the subject was the ‘Landmarks of Homeric Study, together with an Essay on the Points of Contact between the Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric Text,’ which appeared in 1890. Among the numberless solutions of the Homeric question since the days of Wolff, he still maintains the traditional view that there was but one Homer, that he wrote both poems, and that the poems themselves should be regarded as a historic whole. In Mr. Gladstone’s view one of Homer’s chief functions was to weld the diverse elements of the Hellenic nation into one. National unity necessarily involved religious unity, and so Mr. Gladstone goes on to propound the theory that Homer endeavoured to find a place in his heaven for all the gods that had been worshipped by the different races he was welding together, and that with this view he created a composite system of religion. It affords us matter for wonder, he says, as well as admiration, how Homer excluded from this new composite system the most degrading ingredients in which the religions around him abounded. Though forced to admit Aphrodite, he only admitted her to a lower place, and presented her in an unfavourable light. She is, in fact, only the Assyrian Ishtar, the Ashtoreth of the Hebrews and Phœnicians. He also elaborately contends that there was a good deal of morality among Homer’s Greeks, far more than is generally supposed. The Politics of Homer form another chapter, and he finds high praise for the value the poet attached to personal freedom, and in the extraordinary power for those times he attached to the spoken word. Except in the concluding chapter on Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric Texts, Mr. Gladstone added little to what is to be found in one or other of his previous books.